Engineered Addictions

https://masonyarbrough.substack.com/p/engineered-addictions

The deeper issue is that we’ve outsourced our human connection to systems designed for profit. Real connection happens in the margins that can’t be monetized. The conversations that don’t generate data, the relationships that don’t scale, and the moments that can’t be optimized for engagement.

Perhaps the goal isn’t to build better social media. Perhaps it's to build systems that make social media less necessary. Improve third spaces where people connect directly, authentically, without intermediation by systems designed to extract value from their attention.

This isn't about being anti-tech. I'm a founder and engineer myself. It's about being pro-human. These platforms have genuinely connected people across continents, organized movements, and amplified voices that needed to be heard. The core ideas were beautiful and necessary.

But we took a catastrophic wrong turn when we optimized for engagement over connection, for time-on-platform over user wellbeing, for extraction over authentic relationship. Now we’re fighting a battle against the architecture of distraction, against companies that profit from fractured attention and frayed mental health.

Does Abundance Start at Home?

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/09/abundance-at-home

Kelsey Piper and Jasmine Sun talk about microschools, whether localism is the enemy of Abundance, and why Chinese bureaucrats are like Growth PMs.

Scientists of Reddit: What's a discovery that should have blown people's minds but somehow got a collective shrug from the world?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jsjvl7/scientists_of_reddit_whats_a_discovery_that/

We basically “cured” most people of cystic fibrosis in the last five years. It is the most miraculous medical breakthrough I can think of, comparable only to insulin treatment for diabetics or the triple cocktail for HIV patients in the 90s. In the span of five years, thousands of cystic fibrosis patients saw their projected lifespans go up to normal. The treatments don’t work on every CF mutation, but they are incredible. The Atlantic published an article last year that made me sob.

'How A Cancer Diagnosis Inspired My Performance As Nurse Dana On 'The Pitt''

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a64957153/katherine-lanasa-the-pitt-cancer-exclusive-essay/

I began treatment—surgery and about three weeks of daily radiation—in March 2023. Along with my why not me? mantra, I found comfort in the idea of framing everything as love. I saw those big machines as a sign of how fortunate I am—fortunate to have the means to seek care and treatment, and fortunate that somebody cared enough about people to create this device to shoot radiation into me and save my life.

I looked at it all as care and as love. When I set my mind on that intention, everything became evidence of love. Not feeling victimized by the treatment is tricky, but if you can get there, it's really, really helpful.

Saying Goodbye

https://chrisgiven.com/2025/06/saying-goodbye/

When the Treasury Department ordered the Direct File team to stop work and disband, the toughest part was saying goodbye.

Direct File deserves an Ocean’s Eleven-style montage for assembling the team. The old partner who had to be convinced to come back for one more job (the best, and perpetually most reluctant, user experience lead in the business). The loose cannon I was wary of bringing onto the team due to a checkered past (a brilliant engineer with a crypto startup on his resume). The whiz kid with the precise set of skills needed to pull off the plan (an interaction designer by training, she and I had studied up on tax law together, and she took to it like a fish to water).

We came together, a band of misfits and weirdos, under the banner of a fantastical, improbable mission. It felt like we were unstoppable. And then we were stopped.

And as much as we had accomplished, we knew we were just getting started. So we did our best to document what we had learned. We prepared the project for hibernation, writing notes for a future team that might never come. We said goodbye.

It was August 2022.